


Water and Salt

by astolat



Category: Rome
Genre: M/M, Siege of Alexandria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 03:53:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2567246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/pseuds/astolat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months under siege in Alexandria, baking inside the palace walls. Pullo was nearly ready to promise Mars a white ox if only he’d send a proper battle their way, and hang the expense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water and Salt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunabee34 (Lorraine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/gifts).



Two months under siege in Alexandria, baking inside the palace walls. Pullo was nearly ready to promise Mars a white ox if only he’d send a proper battle their way, and hang the expense. Vorenus had been more of a grim stick than usual supervising drill that morning, and Furies knew that was saying something. He wouldn't even let the fellows have a good set-to, shake the stiffness out of their legs; no, he made nearly the whole cohort just sit in the shade and watch while he brought up a handful of the clumsiest fellows and put them through their paces over and over.

“Soft as custard's what we'll be, much more of this,” Pullo said to him grumbling after, gnawing his bread in the alley out back of the palace, overlooking the canal that ran down to the harbor, gone all golden as the sun went down. “What do we do all day but sit on our arses in the shade? A soldier needs to move, not lie about like a damn crocodile.”

Vorenus swallowed his own hunk of bread and jerked his chin at the canal. “Pullo, what do you see there?”

“A ditch full of water,” Pullo said.

“Yes,” Vorenus said. “Full. Was it so last week?”

Pullo looked at it again. It did look higher, come to think of it; odd, with the sun going at them every day like Apollo wanted to turn all their skins into leather for a drum. He couldn’t even see a water mark above the line. “What’s it mean, then?”

Vorenus held out the water-skin, and Pullo took a deep draught of it. He spat it out into the canal: brackish. “It’s off — what are they doing, filling it with poison?”

“In a manner of speaking. They’re putting sea-water into our canals down there,” Vorenus said, jerking his chin toward the lower city: the Egyptian armies had a good three-quarters of the city, and not much chance of pushing them off any time soon, not with just the one legion.

“Damn,” Pullo said, contemplating the water bag. “What d'you suppose we'll do?”

Vorenus shrugged. “If all else fails, fall back to the ships.”

“Let ourselves be run off without even a fight?” Pullo said in protest, revolted.

“They'll give us a fight on the way,” Vorenus said. Cheery as ever. He brushed his hands off and rolled himself into his cloak to sleep.

It was a good spot Vorenus had laid claim to, thanks to centurion privilege: under a low overhang, so the sun didn't hit them in the morning and the rain kept off when it came, which it didn't. Pullo liked it well enough: chilly at night, but they slept warm enough back to back. Suited him better than the stink of a lot of bodies and close air in the courtyards, any road. They'd be outside the inner walls if the Gyppos came at them, but that was all right: they had their swords, didn't they? 

And there wasn’t much room to either side, so they had the place to themselves, nearly; not that Vorenus would ever get any bright ideas, or let Pullo have one either. One time he'd hinted maybe they might get in a girl, and Jupiter's cock, the lecture: bad for discipline, bad for security, bad, bad, bad. Pullo looked over at the other side of the canal: down by the harbor a woman with dark hair was dumping out a pisspot, her skirts hiked up out of the way to show a nice curvy bit of leg. He sighed and laid down at Vorenus’s back. No juice in the man at all sometimes: jealous of himself as a Vestal, as though he had to save it all up for the battlefield. “Never noticed it hurt  _my_ fighting any,” Pullo said over his shoulder: Vorenus would know what he was talking about. 

“You are an undisciplined lout, and it’s only by the gods’ grace and Mars’ gifts you’re still alive,” Vorenus muttered. “Give thanks and stop grousing.”

Pullo settled in: still disappointed, but he couldn’t help being pleased for all that. Ah, that was Vorenus’s way. He’d never come out and say,  _well, Pullo old cock, you’re a damned good fighter_ . You knew what he meant anyway. 

A week later the canal stank of brine, a salt rime caked along the walls, like all their dust-dry lips: salt and blood in their mouths with only a few clean swallows for each man to wash it down. All the cisterns in their quarter were gone brackish. Vorenus wouldn't even let them drink more wine to make up for it. “It would only make you more thirsty,” he growled.

“Wouldn't think about it so much, though, would we,” Pullo said, then stood up sharp: Caesar had come out of the palace door behind them.

“Sir,” Vorenus said for them both.

“Centurion,” Caesar said. “I am afraid there is something of an ill taste to the water. I think we could do with a change. Do you suppose you might have the men dig a few wells inside the southern courtyard?”

“Right away, sir,” Vorenus said.

So that was the rest of the day, stabbing and shoveling dirt under the baking sun, and nothing to wash off the sweat. Vorenus stank like a courier's horse, and it was one of those bitter cold nights; didn’t seem to matter the day had been a proper scorcher. They huddled close to sleep under their cloaks and a couple of shared blankets, face to face so their breath warmed the nest and their chests kept warm. Not a bad smell really. Better than the canal. “I don’t suppose,” Pullo said. 

Vorenus sighed without opening his eyes. “We haven’t bathed in two weeks, we are covered in mud, and at any moment the Egyptian army may start launching darts onto our heads.” 

“Well, no time like the present, eh?” Pullo said, and put a hand on his leg. Vorenus muttered under his breath, but he didn’t object. There was a bit of oil left over from dinner, enough to smear a palm with. Vorenus had a particular way of doing it, neat and mathematical and sure as sunrise: not ten minutes and Pullo was spilling in his hand. “Ah, that’s good,” he said aloud, on a gasp, and though Vorenus gave him at least three times as much trouble, as always, Pullo didn’t mind that either. He liked it: gave him a bit of an excuse. He could prop himself up on an elbow and watch: Vorenus on his back, that frown-crease in the middle of his forehead, panting savage while Pullo’s hand worked on him. It wasn’t that Pullo wanted to get on him: good way to make Vorenus mad as a turtle, that, if he’d been drunk enough to try it, ha. But he liked having Vorenus next to him, liked seeing him blind with fucking his hand, their legs warm and tangled. 

“Ah,” Vorenus said, strangled; there he went. 

They lay close after, eyes heavy and sleep coming on sweet, foreheads together and Vorenus even chuckling with him a little as they panted, his mouth gone soft and open for breath. Pullo leaned in and took a nip at him, his dry salt mouth, and Vorenus was far gone enough that he only huffed resigned amusement into his mouth and kissed him back: a little odd of him to want to, Pullo supposed, but Vorenus kissed like no one else he'd ever had, tender as an unshelled oyster. 

Pullo was taking his turn down in the bottom the next morning, heaving wet earth into the hanging buckets with a helmet, when all of a sudden the ground gave way underfoot and water was rising fast. It came up deliciously cool on his bare skin for a moment, and then he was thrashing in a cloud of mud before Vorenus' hand gripped his around the wrist. They hauled themselves up the rope hand over hand with the dark pool beneath them and the men cheering for water above.

 


End file.
